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Journalists like Nicholas D. Kristof, "pointing and jeering" at customary Arab women's dress codes, are possessed by a parochial ignorance framed by colossal arrogance.
In his gross disdain for the Arab woman's preference for respectful cover over various stages of Western undress, Kristof reveals a degenerate mentality matching the moral turpitude of his own cultural milieu.
 Looking westward as Arabs do when watching TV, or seeing western women when they travel, Arab women choose not to "show my legs and breasts to men" as one Saudi woman told Kristof.
That wasn't enough for this New York Times Voice of America. His provincial pride at a show and tell of tits and ass everywhere made it impossible for him to even see, much less accept, another culture's premises.
That alone would have been reprehensible, but Kristoff has the unmitigated gall to want another culture to yield to the decadence of his own; and that psychotic narcissism represents little more than an attempt to justify his own debased culture.
He had no rational excuse for his myopic vision. He
traveled to Saudi Arabia and asked women there why they covered themselves with black abayas. They clearly told him they didn't want to publicly expose themselves to men.
Kristof reported that "In Riyadh, several Saudi women offered the same scathing critique, effectively arguing that Saudi women are the free ones - free from sexual harassment, free from pornography, free from seeing their bodies used to market cars and colas. It is Western women, they say, who have been manipulated into becoming the toys of men."
These women didn't suggest to Kristof that his own women change their ways, become less decadent and cover up. Arab women don't have Kristof's gauche drive to impose their own culture on others. That kind of thinking comes from haughtiness, the grandiose superiority complex of a culture hooked on its own importance, viagra, hookers, pornography, wife swapping, sex shops titillating busts and beaver shots.
If challenging another culture wasn't enough effrontery, Kristof had the "chutzpah" (a fitting description for those who automatically denigrate anything Arab) to conclude his article with a snide comment about Saudi Arabians choosing to "sacrifice international respect by clinging to the 15th century, if the women prefer to remain second-class citizens, then I suppose that's their choice. But if anyone chooses to behave so foolishly, is it any surprise that outsiders point and jeer"?
The only ones pointing and jeering are those trying to veil their own sick, insolent biases by denigrating another who chooses to be different.
 Kristof's whole charade sounds a bit like Bush's penchant for "regime change" for Iraq. It's narrowly focused and anti-Arab. If Kristof wanted all women, and not just Arabs, to dress Western, he would have chastised Indian women for their saris and the Japanese for their kimonos. Instead, Kristof reveals his true
colors by maligning only Arab women for not yielding to his bikini code of undress.
Whenever Western journalists debase another culture, it's regularly Arabs, Arabs, Arabs. It's time these journalists were recognized and exposed as cultural bigots.
Nicholas
Kristof |